Chapter 14
Monogamy and Its Discontents
Rethinking Marriage

[T]hey’ll say you are bad

or perhaps you are mad

or at least you should stay undercover.

Your mind must be bare

if you would dare

to think you can love more than one lover.

—David Rovics, “The Polyamory Song”

“Isn’t the extent of infidelity proof that monogamy is simply not human nature?”

That question comes up over and over. Today it comes from a young woman who has stepped up to the mic during a workshop. “Wouldn’t we avoid a lot of the pain, suffering, and deceit of infidelity if we just did away with the unnatural tyranny of monogamy?” she asks. “Why can’t we have marriages built around consensual nonmonogamy and solve the problem of cheating?” I see several heads nodding in agreement.

A man in his forties stands up to respond. “Look, I think it’s fine if people want to sleep around. But let’s not pretend that’s marriage! Why not just stay free and single? Real marriage means true commitment.”

“Why does commitment have to be reserved for one person?” another man counters. “We can be committed to many friends or many children. Why not many lovers?”

“It’s not the same thing,” argues the defender of monogamy. “The Bible says love and sex are sacred. You can’t just spread them around.”

“But that’s what everyone’s doing anyway!” exclaims the woman who initiated the now-heated debate. “They just lie about it. The difference is that some of us have accepted that monogamy goes against our nature, and we’re being honest with ourselves and our partners.”

I understand the logic behind her argument: If monogamy is not natural, then imposing it on people gives them no option but to cheat. If you don’t want them to lie, set them free and no one will get hurt.

When it comes to the innate-versus-learned debate, I share the view of activist-academic Meg-John Barker, who emphasizes that our relationship styles are “not a matter of nature or nurture, hardwiring or social construct. Rather the way we form relationships is influenced by a complex web of biological, psychological, and social aspects which would be impossible to disentangle.”1 Natural or not, what matters to us is that presently many men and women seem to find monogamy, translated as mandatory sexual and emotional exclusiveness, quite difficult to maintain. Hence it may be time to at least take a fresh look at the topic.

We should be careful, however, not to conflate the conversation about monogamy with the conversation about infidelity. They are not the same. Let’s parse out a few important distinctions. Infidelity is but one type of nonmonogamy—the nonconsensual variety. There are many other forms of consensual nonmonogamy—where partners explicitly negotiate the sexual and emotional boundaries of their relationships. However, it does not follow that consensual nonmonogamy is a safeguard against betrayal, jealousy, or heartbreak. You may think that affairs don’t happen in open relationships, but they do.

Wherever There Are Rules, There Will Be Trespassers

As with any illicit trade, when adultery becomes legalized, the black market suffers a slump. But it never ceases to intrigue me that even when we have the freedom to direct our gaze toward other sexual partners, we still seem to be lured by the power of the forbidden. Monogamy may or may not be natural to human beings, but transgression surely is.

Every relationship, from the most stringent to the most lenient, has boundaries, and boundaries invite trespassers. Breaking the rules is thrilling and erotic—whether those rules are “one person for life” or “sex is okay but no falling in love” or “always use a condom” or “he can’t come inside you” or “you can fuck other people, but only when I’m watching.” Hence there is plenty of infidelity in open relationships, with all of the ensuing turmoil. If the desire to transgress is the driving force, opening the gate will not prevent adventurers from climbing the fence.

“We’ve always had an open policy for flings,” says Sophie, “but I told him, not with my students or friends. And what did he do? Not only did he choose one of my girls, but he fell seriously in love with her.”

“We make a distinction between sex for love and sex for play,” Dominic tells me. “Nick was free to cruise. I couldn’t even relate to the word ‘cheating’ until I found out that he’d developed an emotional relationship with a guy from New Zealand. That was supposed to be just for us.”

Ethical nonmonogamy rests on the principles of trust and transparency. But human mischief will have its way with this as well. Consider Marcel, a forty-one-year-old sports coach. His wife, Grace, a science teacher at the same high school, had often proposed a more limber marital structure during their decade of marriage, but until he found himself attracted to a woman midway through a rock climb, he was staunchly opposed. Now the idea went from repelling to appealing, so he asked Grace for her okay, which she gave. “I felt a huge debt of gratitude to her,” he says. “I finally understood what she had been trying to tell me all along.”

From that day on, Marcel and Grace agreed to an open marriage based on honesty and communication. When Grace asked his permission to sleep with someone else, it was challenging, but he let her go, finding himself “surprisingly aroused” to watch her getting dressed up for her date. “I felt immensely proud of the commitment that we had made to each other, of how far we had come,” he recalls.

Marcel’s pride was about to take a fall, however, when a friend let it slip that Grace had been carrying on a secret affair, after their new emancipation agreement. When he confronted her, his surprise turned to shock at the many trysts she confessed to—before and after their renegotiation. “And here I was thinking we were so ‘evolved’! How naive! Why, after I agreed to openness, would she go behind my back?”

The answer is all too clear. As Katherine Frank and John DeLamater point out, “The exhortation to ‘always use protection’ enhances the thrill of barebacking; the pledge against sex in the marital bed is tossed aside like the comforter, becoming part of the adventure. . . . the goal of ‘responsible nonmonogamy’ may eventually provide fodder for rebellion and eroticization.”2 In the realm of the erotic, negotiated freedom is not nearly as enticing as stolen pleasures.

You may be thinking, “I told you so—open marriages don’t work.” As it stands, Marcel and Grace are still together, and still open. But his idealism has been tempered and he no longer sees their flexibility as a shield against betrayal.

Opening Up Monogamy Without Taking It Apart

Cheating and lying aside, I see the conversation about ethical nonmonogamy as a valiant attempt to tackle the core existential paradoxes that every couple wrestles with—security and adventure, togetherness and autonomy, stability and novelty. The debate over monogamy often appears to be about sex. To me, it asks a more fundamental question: Can a new configuration of commitment help us to achieve what French philosopher Pascal Bruckner calls “the improbable union of belonging and independence”?3

Iris, the thirty-something product of a marriage that was as long as it was miserable, has no intention of ever getting stuck. She wants an “intentional relationship.” “When we come home, I want to know that it’s out of free choice rather than obligation.” She sees her agreement with Ella as reinforcing their trust. “We are devoted, but we don’t own each other. We respect each other’s independence and individuality.”

Barney, now in his fifties, has been married and divorced twice, and in more therapy sessions than he can count. “People tell me I have issues with intimacy and commitment, but that’s not true. I’m as loyal as they come, but it’s time for me to be honest: I’m not monogamous. I don’t want to keep trying to please everyone. I’d rather be authentic and create a workable relationship that’s aboveboard from the start.”

“I’ve always wanted to be meaningfully connected with many people, and I’m bisexual,” explains Diana, a feisty lawyer in her thirties. “It’s not going to cut it for me to just have an occasional threesome for my boyfriend’s birthday—I want a committed relationship that encompasses all my loves. Monogamy feels like offering someone else ownership of my sexuality, and that’s anathema to my values as a feminist.”

Her primary partner of thirteen years, Ed, a scientist who is also bi, feels similarly. “Neither of us feels that our bond with each other is threatened by our appreciation for newness and variety. We both love the fact that the other is a sexual being, and neither of us would dare to quash that desire in the other.” However, these dedicated parents play differently. Diana has a few steady lovers who “feel like part of our extended family.” Ed, on the other hand, is more likely to seek out new connections. With new partners comes risk. So when Ed has a date with a lover, health considerations top the agenda. To ensure safe picks, Diana has been known to conduct reconnaissance and do matchmaking. Such are the rules of engagement that make this innovative union work.

For these romantic reformists, convention leads to constriction and dishonesty. They want truthfulness, choice, and authenticity. And they want a connection with their partners that doesn’t disconnect them from themselves or from other people. They want to weave a tapestry together without losing their own threads.

Today’s nonmonogamists—at least the ones who sit on my couch—are very different from the free-love pioneers of the sixties and seventies. Some of them are the children of the divorced and the disillusioned. They are not rebelling against commitment per se; they are looking for more realistic ways to make their vows last, and have concluded that the quest includes other lovers. The form this takes can vary enormously—from married couples who allow each other occasional “hall passes,” to swingers who play with others together, to established three- or foursomes, to complex polyamorous networks that are reconfiguring love and family life.

Trust, loyalty, and attachment come in many forms. As feminist theorist Shalanda Phillips notes, “Experiences such as these call into question the integrity of monogamy as a stable construct, not rejecting it intact, but pulling it apart from the inside out.”4 Rather than simply dismissing monogamy, these nonconformists aim for a more holistic, malleable definition of the term, one that no longer rests solely on the pedestal of sexual exclusiveness. Hence some observers, including psychologist Tammy Nelson, have characterized this movement not as nonmonogamy but as a “new monogamy”—a shift in the way the architecture of commitment is designed and constructed.

Of course, this is not the first time that the marital rules of engagement are being called into question. Over the last couple of hundred years, various communities have experimented with new models. The gay community in particular has been at the forefront of this endeavor. Since the sanctioned heteronormative model was not available to them until recently, they took it upon themselves to be creative and have practiced nonexclusive forms of relating with much success. Now, in our era of egalitarianism and inclusion, more and more straight folks seek the same license. A recent study published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy found that one in five currently single people have experimented with some form of open relationship.5

I meet many people who are involved in this project of redrawing the silhouette of love. Couples often ask me for help in navigating the new terrain of plural connections. Few social scripts exist as yet. We are all improvising. When I was training to become a therapist, a relationship by definition was a party of two. I never encountered the words “triad,” “quad,” or “polyamorous pod,” since alternative relational systems had no legitimacy. And yet all of this is part of my practice today.

Some pairs are interested in embracing a multiplicity of intimate partners from the start; others, after decades of exclusivity, become curious about how to draw fresh lines around their long-established coupledom. And then there are those who, in the aftermath of an affair, wonder if opening the doors of their relationship would be a more mature response to the crisis than closing the door on decades of companionate life.

All of them are trying to wrap their arms around the imponderables: Can love be plural? Is possessiveness intrinsic to love or is it merely a vestige of patriarchy? Can jealousy be transcended? Can commitment and freedom coexist?

It will never work! you may be thinking. Marriage is complicated enough. It will destroy the family! It’s bad for the kids! But people used to make exactly the same predictions in the 1980s with couples pioneering religious, racial, and cultural intermarriage or blending families upon remarriage. And they have done so at every other milestone in the ongoing sexual revolution that has defined the past half-century. Maybe we should give the marital innovators some time to figure it out. After all, does the old monogamy work so well?

If relational originality just sounds too damn messy, I can assure you, after listening to thousands of infidelity stories, that the messiness of affairs makes many of these situations seem rather orderly. Marital sufferings and family crises as a result of infidelity are so damaging that it behooves us to seek new strategies that fit the world in which we live. I’m not suggesting that dissolving monogamy is the answer for everyone. But it is obvious that the current model is hardly a universal fit. Hence I respect monogamy’s dissidents and their contribution to creating new templates for relating.

Redefining Fidelity

In order to engage in a constructive critique of monogamy, we must look beyond the prosaic question of how many sexual partners one is allowed and embark on a deeper examination of fidelity. As sex columnist Dan Savage argues, it is reductionist to make sexual exclusivity the sole marker of devotion. He likes to illustrate this with the story of a five-times-married woman who accused him of not being committed because he and his husband of twenty years are nonexclusive. “Which of us is more committed?”

Sitting in my office, post-affair, with his wife, Amelia, Dawson echoes a similar frustration. “I have been faithful to you for twenty-five years. The first twenty-four were happily monogamous. The last one was happy, with the addition of another woman. That said, my loyalty has never wavered. I’ve been there for you. When your brother lived with us for a year while he was in alcohol recovery, when you had breast cancer, when your father died, I was always there. I am so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. But when you measure my allegiance only by where I stick my dick, it’s as if the rest doesn’t count for anything.”

For many people, sexual exclusivity feels inextricable from trust, security, commitment, and loyalty. It seems unimaginable that we could retain those virtues in a more permeable relationship. However, as the psychiatrist Stephen B. Levine posits, changing values is an integral part of life experience. We do it with our political and our religious values, as well as with our professional ones. So why not with our sexual ones as well? He invites us to recognize that our values evolve as we mature and “move from an understanding of ethical and moral issues in black and white absolutist terms to comprehending the gray ambiguity of most matters.”6

What if we were to consider fidelity as a relational constancy that encompasses respect, loyalty, and emotional intimacy? It may or may not include sexual exclusiveness, depending on the agreements of those involved. As we consider a redefinition, let’s acknowledge those who are already engaged in the project.

Today’s romantic pluralists have done more thinking about the meaning of fidelity, sexuality, love, and commitment than many monogamous couples ever do, and are often closer to each other as a result. What strikes me about many of their alternative renderings of relatedness is that they are anything but frivolous. Contrary to the stereotypes of bored, immature, commitment-phobic people engaging in a licentious romp, these experiments in living are built on thoughtful communication and careful consideration. If there’s anything they’ve taught me, it’s that there is tremendous merit in having open discussions about the subject of monogamy and the nature of fidelity, whether they result in open marriage or not.

Navigating the Monogamy Continuum

In a culture that places such importance on monogamy and attaches such dire consequences to breaking it, one would think it would be a prime topic of deliberation. But for many, even raising the question seems too risky. If we need to talk about it, it is an admission that love has not irrevocably tamed our roving desires. “I’ve only been dating this guy for a few months and yesterday he casually asked me if I was really into monogamy. The message is pretty clear: he’s not that into me.”

Plus, if you thought infidelity was a polarizing topic, monogamy is even more so. It’s another of those typically “for or against” standoffs. People go instantly to the notion of “closed” and “open,” caught in a binary perspective. Either you’re sleeping only with your spouse or you’re sleeping with everyone else. There are no gradations—you can’t be mostly monogamous, or 95 percent faithful. Dan Savage has attempted to soften the hard edges with his term “monogamish,” which signifies remaining emotionally committed to each other but making space for the third, whether in fantasy, flirtation, flings, threesomes, sex parties, or Grindr pickups. My patient Tyrone likes the term because, as he puts it, “It speaks to how there is a fundamental fidelity to our fifteen-year partnership, but it also contains a bit of levity and flexibility, which is great.”

Monogamy is anything but monochromatic, particularly in our digital age. Today we each negotiate our particular brand. We decide whether it allows for fantasizing about someone else while making love to our partner, for extracurricular orgasms, for enjoying memories of one’s wild youth, for porn, for sexting, app browsing, or more. In other words, monogamy exists on a continuum. When you ask people if they are monogamous, I suggest you ask them first what their definition of monogamy is.

Tammy Nelson makes the pertinent observation that most couples live with two separate monogamy contracts. The explicit agreement is their official declaration, like the marriage vows, and it defines the partnership’s overt rules. In contrast, the implicit agreement is unspoken and “may never be openly visited before the commitment ceremony, or even after.” It is a reflection of cultural, religious, and personal values. Nelson affirms that, contrary to the unified public stance, couples tend to hold very different implicit views of monogamy, and that “often a sudden collision between each partner’s implicit contract precipitates a marital crisis.”7 In our business, that collision is usually called an affair. Hence, we would rather say what society sanctions and what our partner wants to hear, and keep our truths to ourselves. Not because we are inherently deceptive, but because the culture that we live in provides little space for such frankness.

Until now monogamy has been the default setting, and it sits on the premise (however unrealistic) that if you truly love, you should no longer be attracted to others. This is why it often takes a fling or a betrayal to launch the conversation. Once the fiction has been cracked and you are no longer protecting it, you can begin to craft a more truthful narrative together. But it would be nice if this were not always precipitated by crisis. Drawing on the experience of gay men, Savage suggests that monogamy should be an “opt-in.” If people were given more opportunity to choose, he offers, maybe some of them wouldn’t have opted in and then they wouldn’t be in trouble for adultery. Rather than penalize those who fail monogamy’s standardized test, we should recognize that the test is disproportionately difficult. Savage is a fine pragmatist, but he’s also more philosophical than his flippant demeanor lets on. He highlights a point that is both obvious and profound. Having feelings and desires for others is natural, and we have a choice whether to act on them or not.

The Economics of Addition

Are love and sex finite resources, with only so much to go around? Or is sex with other people a risky investment with high returns, paying unexpected erotic dividends? In the past, the fear driving monogamy was that you’d end up feeding children who were not your own. Now, when contraception and paternity testing can take care of that, what are we afraid of? For many, it comes down to this: Today’s intimate commitment is predicated on love. The austerity of duty has been replaced by fluctuating emotions. If we get too close to others, one of us might fall in love with someone else and leave. It’s pure dread that loosening the grip on monogamy, even in the slightest, could unravel the strongest bond.

What the vanguardists are trying to tell me (and perhaps themselves) is that the opposite is true. They believe that if they subject themselves to the constraints of monogamy, they’re more likely to bolt. The more freedom they have, the thinking goes, the more stable their relationships will be.

For Kyle and Lucy, this seems to be true. Their story began as an adventure of the mind. Kyle is an engineer in his late forties who lives in Minneapolis. He had always fantasized about inviting a third into his relationship—specifically, a man to have sex with his wife while he watched. One day he found the courage to whisper his preferred scenario in her ear while they were making love. Seeing her turned on by his words gave him the feeling he was “riding on the edge of marriage.” Their sexual play went on for eight years. Then Kyle began to long for something less ephemeral. Besides finding the idea of a real third arousing, he saw it as a hedge against adultery. “I know that it’s difficult to be faithful and stay interested in one person for a lifetime. But there has to be a better way than the typical ‘betrayal.’”

One day, in year nine, Lucy, a vivacious interior designer and the mother of two, met a charming stranger on the train and struck up a conversation. He invited her to the opera. She texted Kyle to ask, “Should I go?” and he replied, “Yes, but buy an extra ticket for me.” That night, he recalls, “I sat just behind them incognito. I was excited to see if he would touch her.”

A few months later Lucy was propositioned by a younger man—sex with no strings attached. “I encouraged her to go for it,” Kyle says. “Since then, our sex life, which had dwindled after the kids were born, has boomed.” Lucy needed reassurance that he was really okay with it, so they would make love before she left. When she returned, Kyle needed to know every detail, and she was comfortable telling him only if they were again making love. They took it a step further last month when Lucy went to a hotel with her lover and Kyle booked the room next door so he could listen. “When he checked out, she came to join me.”

Kyle and Lucy relish the buzz of transgression—not against each other, but together, against cultural norms. Ninety-five percent of the time, they are exclusive; occasionally, they open the door. Their scheme maintains the ideal of the dyadic relationship and of faithfulness, albeit in an unorthodox form. It is a limited excursion that feels safe and can be a guard against straying. Playing with others stokes their ardor for each other.

In my study of desire, there is a question I have taken with me around the globe: “When do you feel most drawn to your partner?” One of the most common answers I hear is “When others are attracted to him or to her.” The triangular gaze is highly erotic, which is why stories like Kyle and Lucy’s are much less unusual than you may expect. Opening up a relationship does not always deplete the intimacy of the couple; sometimes it serves to replenish it. The fantasy of inviting in a third comes in many variations—imagining, enacting, watching, joining in, waiting at home, listening behind a door, enjoying the detailed report.

“Monogamy and nonmonogamy feed off each other and are inextricably linked,” writes therapist Dee McDonald. Her focus is swingers, but I would extend the observation to many inclusive couples: Sex with others isn’t only about being with others. “It is perhaps more accurate to consider it a rather intricate, perhaps dangerous, method of teasing and arousing the primary partner.”8 McDonald raises the pertinent question: When couples are physically interacting with another, while psychologically and emotionally interacting with each other, “Who is having sex with whom?”9

Couples using others for a libidinal reboot is common enough, but it doesn’t always last. After a decade of marriage that has included recreational sex in various configurations, Xavier and Phil are coming to terms with the somber realization that their entire sex life has been farmed out, leaving a void between them.

By many standards, these two young men have a good thing going. Included in each other’s families, they’ve built a home and a large circle of friends. They are interested in each other’s careers—Xavier, the quintessential bearded hipster, owns a vegan chocolate company, while Phil is the founder of a coworking facility for young entrepreneurs.

As part of a close group of young gay men, they have plenty of sex, often in each other’s presence, but rarely with each other. “Even on our anniversary, when we invited someone to have a threesome, we barely touched each other,” Xavier tells me. “How is that for you?” I inquire. Turning to Phil, he says, “I feel like you try hard not to make me feel excluded, but that’s not the same as feeling included.” For a time, the sexual energy of their collective encounters was masking the lack of energy between them, but it’s become unavoidable. Phil protests that it’s not so bad—he thinks it’s just a phase, a natural ebb and flow. “I’m not looking to replace you,” he insists. But Xavier is rattled. “It’s not that we’re choosing other people as well as each other—it’s that we’re choosing other people instead of each other.” Sadly, for this couple outsourcing sex led to a recession at home.

Closing the borders is not an option that Xavier and Phil want to consider. But I suggest to them that limiting their crossings for a period may be helpful while they get their juice back. Consensual nonmonogamy requires both sexual diversity and intimacy, crossings and barriers. They have favored variety over closeness, and this is depleting their relationship.

Reserving sexual attentions for each other is not the only way to tighten a bond. But when we decide that sex will not be the boundary that secludes us from others, it behooves us to think about alternative markers of specialness. Philosopher Aaron Ben-Ze’ev makes a distinction between two relationship models, one defined by exclusiveness, the other by uniqueness. The first one focuses on what is forbidden with another, whereas the second one centers on what is special about the beloved. One emphasizes the negative consequences; the other, the positive possibilities.10 I ask Xavier and Phil to consider: “If sex is something you share with others, what is exceptional to the two of you?” Exploring this question together helps them reclaim their common ground without giving up their freedom.

The Nonmonogamy Playbook

In order for commitment to take on new meaning beyond sexual exclusivity, we need to talk about boundaries. Nonmonogamists don’t just indulge in a sexual free-for-all. Rather, many create explicit relational agreements with as much precision as a legal document. Common features include stipulations around honesty and transparency; where and how often liaisons with other lovers can take place; who those lovers can be and which specific sex acts can and cannot be shared with them; degrees of emotional involvement; and of course, rules about protection. Ally, Tara, and Richie are a triad who live and sleep together, and each is also free to play with others. “Our one rule,” Ally explains, “is the use of condoms with external partners. The three of us are fluid-bonded, so if one person takes chances it puts us all at risk.”

“Fluid” is an important term in these discussions, and not just in reference to the bodily variety. The boundaries in these carnal contracts are more fluid than the rigid restrictions of traditional monogamy, designed to be inclusive and adaptable. This distinction is particularly well captured by scholar and activist Jamie Heckert, who highlights the difference between boundaries and borders:

Whereas borders are constructed as unquestionably right . . . boundaries are what is right at the time, for particular people involved in a particular situation. . . . Whereas borders claim the unquestionable and rigid authority of law, boundaries have a fluidity, and openness to change; more a riverbank, less a stone canal. Borders demand respect, boundaries invite it. Borders divide desirables from undesirables, boundaries respect the diversity of desires.11

Boundaries vary greatly from one relationship to another, and they may also vary between partners. Partner A may feel fine about Partner B having intercourse with someone else, but prefers no kissing, while Partner B may be comfortable with Partner A doing whatever she likes. Partner C doesn’t want to know much at all—just a text so he’s not caught unawares. Partner D wants to be told the granular details in person, while he is holding her. These differing preferences speak to what the popular contemporary author Tristan Taormino calls the “myth of equality—the common assumption in conventional relationships that each partner has the same needs and desires. Equality, she explains, has become synonymous with symmetry, leading couples to override the differences that likely exist between their sexual needs and emotional sensitivities.12 In these new contracts, symmetry is not required; agreement is.

Some couples take this a step further, with the privilege of plurality applying only to one partner, while the other remains exclusive. Celine tells me, “I have always known that I can compartmentalize, but my husband, Jerome, cannot. I’m emotionally monogamous. I can have my escapades and it will not be a risk to our relationship, but he is a true romantic. He falls for ‘le grand amour.’ I know; I was his last affair. That was three decades ago, but he hasn’t changed. If he fell for another woman, he would want to start all over—marriage, kids, and so on. So that’s too risky.” Jerome knows himself too, so he’s agreed to their asymmetric setup. “At first it was hard for him to accept,” Celine says, “as he wanted my attention to be solely on him, but I think he has enjoyed the times when I came to him energized from within. I didn’t need to spell out the details.”

Jax, a thirty-four-year-old music producer, came out only in his late twenties. When he moved in with Emmett, his first serious boyfriend, he was not prepared to live with a new set of restrictions. “Emmett is older and he had his fun for years—he’s ready to settle down. I love him, but I’m not. Plus, I’m a submissive and Emmett does not want to dominate me, so we’ve agreed that I can go elsewhere for my sub needs.” Jax and Emmett, like Celine and Jerome, practice what Michael LaSala calls “a monogamy of the heart.”

While uneven agreements may be a good fit for some, they work best when based on differing preferences rather than on power imbalances. Sexual license is a symbol of power in a relationship, as are money, age, experience, confidence, and social standing. Tyler, a successful basketball player in his late twenties, came to see me with his girlfriend of six months, Joanie, who had recently given up her life in New York and moved across the country to be with him. Just twenty-one, she’d graduated from art school and was “trying to figure out who I want to be.” Tyler was the one with the control. It was his city, his money, his career. So when she found out he’d still been hooking up with an old girlfriend, Joanie was less than thrilled.

Tyler tried to put a good spin on his dalliance. “I wasn’t choosing her over you,” he declared. “I’d love for the three of us to have a great time together.” Although Joanie is not opposed to plus ones in principle, she resents him sneaking around behind her back and then trying to make it okay.

To me, what stands out are the multiple power imbalances in this couple, which make his proposal far less equitable than Tyler wants to admit. Their negotiation about fluidity is compromised because she is too vulnerable. Nonmonogamy requires equal footing and trust. A couple needs shared agency when they are going to enter an open relationship. Both parties need to feel that they are choosing from a position of parity.

Successful nonmonogamy means that two people straddle commitment and freedom together. In Joanie and Tyler’s relationship, I can see that too easily they will polarize, with her becoming the protector of the union and him becoming the freedom fighter. He, more afraid of losing himself; she, more afraid of losing him. Their new contract will not work unless it helps to bridge this human dilemma, not accentuate it.

My concerns are confirmed when I probe further and he admits that actually he was envisioning the openness being reserved for him, since his girlfriend isn’t really wired for casual sex. “She gets much more emotionally attached,” he explains, “so I don’t think it would work for her.” I have had so many men sit in my office and tell me a version of this story. More often than not, they justify these conclusions on the questionable grounds that sexual diversity is more “natural” for men than it is for women. How convenient! They are usually taken aback when I point out that the “progressive” arrangement they are seeking is ultimately quite regressive—polygamy. There is nothing radical in a man imposing his mistress on his wife.

My conversations with Joanie highlight that until she is more empowered, she will never feel that she can choose freely. As we talk, I can see her beginning to relax and trust her own instincts. Tyler takes my challenge well—especially when I tell him that we don’t really know what women are “wired” for, since they’ve never been allowed to figure it out. I leave them both with plenty to think and talk about. Inequality, gender, power, and a solid foundation are all considerations that need to be addressed before broaching how to open up a relationship.

Beta Testing New Families

The cultural shift toward more inclusive relationships is not just about expanding sexual frontiers; it’s part of a larger societal movement to reimagine what constitutes a family. The lines once defined by blood and kinship are now being pushed out in all directions as people divorce, remarry, divorce again, cohabit, adopt, use donors and surrogates, and blend families. Alice is walked down the aisle by her father and her stepfather. Inga and Jeanine invite the sperm donor to become their son’s godfather. Sandy opts for an open adoption and stays in touch with her twins as they are raised by Jo and Lincoln. Madeleine is becoming a first-time parent at fifty-two, thanks to an egg donor—an experience that until recently was only possible for men. Drew has five siblings who span four marriages, three affairs, three religions, and three racial backgrounds. None of these examples raises an eyebrow anymore—so how shocking is it that Drew grows up with a skepticism about old-fashioned monogamy?

Perhaps it won’t be long before we are quite comfortable with an arrangement like Nila’s, in which her girlfriend, Hanna, stays with her husband and three kids to help out when she’s away on business. Or Oliver, whose boyfriend, Andres, comes to stay for the weekend, while his wife, Cara, moves into the spare bedroom. Their college-age son’s first reaction was “Oh, so Dad has a boyfriend? Mom, do you want a girlfriend as well?” Or Kelli and Bentley, who are moving in with another couple to become a quad and raise their children together. In each of these new relational arrangements, we see up close the shift from inherited social structures to original improvisations.

These new formations come with new dilemmas. In a session in London, I meet a long-married forty-something couple, Deborah and William, and their lover of two years, Abigail, in her late thirties with a loudly ticking biological clock. Their unconventional union has been a beautiful love story, but now they are at an impasse. Abigail wants a child; Deborah, a mother of three, is excited to add a new baby to the household, but does not want William to be the biological father. That is something they have reserved as theirs alone. The snag is that William doesn’t want Abigail to sleep with other men. What is she to do? She’s frozen her eggs and is considering donors, but is struggling with a deeper existential question: “Am I just fitting into their life, or are we building a life together? What is my place in this relationship?” Abigail is grasping for legitimacy, but is not even sure what it looks like.

Many people are looking for a safe place to examine feelings like jealousy without being told that the presence of those feelings is proof that these groupings don’t work. Others seek guidance on the intricacies of scrupulous honesty that govern life on the relational edge.

If there is one person who has orbited this space, it’s Diana Adams. A lawyer in her mid-thirties, Diana is a passionate advocate for alternative relationships and families. She aims to invest them with as much legal stability as possible, helping them create clear agreements and ironing out disputes that come up. In her personal life she and her partner Ed (whom we met earlier in the chapter) are active in the polyamorous community.

Polyamorists (a term that entered The Oxford English Dictionary in 2006) emphasize creating meaningful connections, in contrast with those who seek casual hookups or playful short-term encounters. It’s not “just sex” that they share with many partners—it’s also love, not to mention domestic life. Polyamorists tend to characterize their lifestyle as a serious endeavor, involving mindfulness, maturity, and a lot of talking—hence the common joke in poly circles, “Swingers have sex. Polys have conversations.”

Joking aside, polyamory is a growing movement in the United States and around the world. Many who choose this lifestyle do so with an entrepreneurial mind-set that aspires to a greater freedom of choice, authenticity, and flexibility. It’s no surprise, then, that there are particularly high concentrations of polyamorists in hotbeds of start-up culture like Silicon Valley.

It has often struck me that the polyamorous lifestyle is more than just sex and freedom. It is a new type of community-building. Its flexible network of attachments, including multiple parental figures, is an attempt to counterbalance the isolation felt by so many modern couples trapped in the nuclear model. These diversified lovers are seeking a new sense of collectivity, belonging, and identity—aspects of life they would have received from the traditional social and religious institutions.

The modern ethos of individualism, as attractive as it may be, leaves many of us beleaguered with uncertainty. Polyamory seeks to honor these values while embedding them in a communal context.

Of course, this is not without its challenges. As Pascal Bruckner writes, “Freedom does not release us from responsibilities but instead increases them. It does not lighten our burden but weighs us down further. It resolves problems less than it multiplies paradoxes. If this world sometimes seems brutal, that is because it is ‘emancipated’ and each individual’s autonomy collides with that of others and is injured by them: never have people had to bear on their shoulders so many constraints.”13 The collision of autonomies threatens every modern romance, but in polyamory it can become a multi-vehicle pileup.

When the rules are broken, the fallout ripples through the relational network. Should the transgressor be ostracized from the entire community? If one of your lovers “cheats” on you, for example, by pursuing a secretive relationship when disclosure had been agreed upon, should your other lovers now break it off with him, too? And how do you keep track of the relative status of so many different relationships? A poly friend recounted a story in which she was happily sexting with a new boyfriend, with the understanding that they were both free to see other people. Then she found out from a mutual friend that he had a girlfriend, with whom he had agreed to monogamy. “This hit me like a ton of bricks. By sexting me, he was cheating. I had been made a party to infidelity without my consent, which gutted me.”

Polyamorists tend to attach a great deal of moral weight to their commitment to transparency and individual liberty—in fact, many seem firmly convinced that it’s a stance more virtuous than that of the lying and cheating monogamists. Their critics highlight the inherently privileged nature of their lifestyle, with its aura of being entitled to have it all.14 Furthermore, it is easy to underestimate the degree of self-knowledge that such inventive boundary breaking demands. Freedom saddles us with the burden of having to know what we want. Be that as it may, the polyamorous experiment is a natural offshoot of the societal trend toward greater personal license and self-expression.

Will we see a day when a group form of marriage becomes acceptable, with triads or quads saying “We do”? Perhaps. But in the meantime, Diana Adams is more interested in seeing increased social protections for alternative families. While same-sex marriage was an important victory for gay rights and opened up a cultural conversation about the definition of marriage and love, she says, we shouldn’t forget that the movement was also “a queer critique of the nuclear family and traditional monogamous sexuality.” The same is true of monogamy’s insurgents. Rather than “cram people into the institution of marriage,” she says, “we ultimately want to get the government out of the business of deciding whether you get tax benefits, health insurance, and immigration status based on whom you’re having sex with.”15

Her thoughts remind me of the late psychologist and gay activist Michael Shernoff, who reflected critically on the shift “from gay men radically transforming American society” to gay men “assimilating into it in conservative and hetero-normative ways.” He lauded consensual nonmonogamy as a “vibrant, normative, and healthy part” of the gay community, and expressed concern that the advent of gay marriage might consign this “venerable, multigenerational tradition” to the category of adultery. “Couples who successfully negotiate sexual nonexclusivity,” he wrote, “are, whether or not they are conscious of it, being genuinely subversive, in one of the most constructive ways possible . . . by challenging the patriarchal notion that there is only one ‘proper’ and ‘legitimate’ (hetero-normative) way that loving relationships should and need to be conducted.”16

Monogamy was once a subject that was never even discussed in the therapist’s office, but today as a matter of course I ask every couple, What is your monogamy agreement? Marriage without virginity was once inconceivable. So, too, sex without marriage. We are touching the new frontier, where sex outside can live within a marriage. Is our culture ready for the heretic notion that a relationship could be reinforced by fluid boundaries, rather than destroyed? Is it the end of monogamy? Or is it just one more step in its long history of redefinitions?